Friday, May 30, 2008

I finished up Karen's RR and its ready to get into the mail. I decided to add a turkey and pumpkins to the right hand side and another tree. Her theme is country so I didn't want to get too many farm critters in there. But since I love Autumn, I couldn't resist adding a touch of fall-ish colour to this one. I hope Karen likes it. Her neighbourhood is really taking shape with 6 houses now on it!

Tomorrow is hubby and my 28th wedding anniversary. We are planning to celebrate with dinner in Toronto and a movie. Yup, that's about our speed these days. And we each bought ourselves our own anniversary gifts - he got a new 'walking' lawnmower and I bought a new sewing machine. So it looks like we'll both be studying manuals to figure out how to put these things together and make them work.

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Some goodies bought at yard sales this weekend....2 Omni grid rulers, both looking brand new, and for only 25 cents each! That's a whale of a bargain! And some more wooden spools to add to my collection.I have managed to get some good stitching time on the Love Sampler the past few days - enough so that even I can see some progress. I'm about halfway through the third set of pages, after that only one more set....I think I might get this done in time for the September wedding!Meanwhile machine quilting has come to a dead stop. My wonderful little Janome machine has never honestly done well with free motion quilting but now its putting up such a fuss, that I'm ready to throw in the towel. I haved tried numerous different types of needles, but still the thread keeps breaking or the needle skips several stitches, not to mention the tension on the back is awful. No amount of playing with different settings seems to make any difference. So my Lucky Stars quilt sits with half the stars stippled and the other half barren. I've been checking the want ads thinking to buy an older used machine for simple machine quilting.And I think I think some lessons in photography..... :-(

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

It was a holiday weekend for us with Victoria Day yesterday and as usual, our first weekend at the cottage....and as usual it was cold cold cold.....and rainy! It doesn't make for the most fun, although we did get in a lovely walk through the woods on Sunday morning. And hubby's Aunt's birthday party was a great time. There must have been 80 people who attended. It was wonderful to catch up with people we hadn't seen for quite a while.

It seems most of my stitching projects are on 40 ct linens and I can't stitch on these any more without a magnifier, so I took along LHN's Watermelon and got a nice start on that. Poor little blackbird - he is beakless at the moment!

Yesterday afternoon I got back to working on my latest RR, this one is Karen's and she requested a country feel for her neighbourhood. I decided to use The Prairie Schooler's A Farmer's Almanac. Its may be a little more woodsy looking but I thought this fit for me. I'm in the process of stitching in some hens and chicks at the bottom before I fill in the grassy bits, but I'm still undecided what to do with the right hand side. Some more trees maybe?

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Finally....a chance to update my blog! I feel like I have been in a whirlwind since we got back from Charlotte last week. Carrie and I had a wonderful time visiting with Kelly and Chris. We did a lot of shopping, lots of eating, and even had a chance to visit Carrie's bridesmaid Erin who lives about an hour from Kelly. I managed to find shoes for the wedding and a handbag, as well as some gorgeous new sandals for summer, and some clothes to add to my disgraceful wardrobe.

Since I've been home, I put together a McKenna Ryan wallhanging. Its a present for hubby's dear aunt who is turning 75 this weekend. She is an avid gardener and although I tend to forget the names of most flowers, the purple coneflower I do remember being plentiful in her garden so I thought this wallhanging was perfect for her. All that's left to do is handsew the rest of the binding on and its finished.And I finished up Donna's round robin for the Quaker Friendship Round Robin. Just in time too I think because the next mailing date is fast approaching.Sorry for the darkish picture! Donna chose NPI silk in a gorgeous deep green for her piece and it looks amazing in RL.

And a finish for me - A Stitcher's Prayer by Little House Needleworks. I had to admit that I was glad to get this one done, I made so many mistakes and frogged so many sections, even using the completely wrong colour floss in the house. Why do designers use symbols that are so similar? Or is it just my eyesight that needs some help? So when I realized, half way through, that there was a huge error in counting in the bottom line of design, I left it as is....kind of fits with the prayer that way I think. Thanks for stopping by!

Friday, May 02, 2008

And we're off! Tomorrow, that is, to Charlotte, North Carolina to visit my daughter Kelly for a few days. I was surprised with an early Mother's Day gift from Carrie with 2 airplane tickets, one for each of us. I'm so excited to be going away and visiting with Kelly and Chris. And of course , we'll have to manage to get in a little shopping here and there :-D

I have to add in a stitching update, although I still don't feel like I'm making much progress on anything. I guess that's what happens when you in the middle of a honking big project like this one. Sorry no photos, its a dark gloomy day and I have several lights on in the house even though its morning.

Here is Love with a Capital L, 7 weeks after starting.Its coming though and I have to remind myself I'm almost at the halfway point! And I am enjoying stitching this, I love not changing floss colours over and over again.